[2] James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2008), p.141. Mr Kalb’s excellent book provides one of the best analyses of liberalism yet written, and his weblog gives one of the best summary definitions: “we’re free to be you and me, as long as the differences never matter.” ( “The One, the Many, and the Alternative Right”, Turnabout, 16th March 2010.)

If predictability is a problem, then the Russian authorities could respond with a parade of jugglers and dwarf-acrobats, also helping to surprise and delight all those bourgeois liberals whose insanity makes every normal, sane, rational, or traditional response appear to them to be grossly unsophisticated.